The present disclosure is related to a power supply method for efficient operation of electronic cards and an electronic card using the same, and more particularly, relates to a power supply method using an energy harvesting circuit and an electronic card using the same.
Getting out of the method of a conventional magnetic card which records card information on a magnetic stripe, a smart card may store the information in an integrated circuit (IC) chip and includes various types of card, such as a card giving and receiving information in a contact or contactless method, a hybrid card and a combination card. Meanwhile, the smart card may have a secure element with improved security since various secure information for making a payment is stored therein.
As the smart cards are also used for transaction certification or user authentication, as well as payment, they are developed as electronic cards of various forms by adding a one-time password (OTP) function, a bioinformation recognition function or the like.
As various functions are added to the electronic cards unlike existing smart cards, each component of the electronic cards consumes power, and the electronic cards employ a method of using its own battery. However, since the size, run time, charging method or the like of the battery does not meet conditions for commercializing the electronic cards, powerless electronic cards are developed recently. As a prior technique, a powerless information processing device of Korea Patent Registration No. 10-0537903 shows an example of a powerless IC card.